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Artist: Kate Campbell with Spooner Oldham
Label: Large River Music
Time: 14 tracks/45:49 minutes
Kate Campbell has been releasing spiritually rich albums for many years though in more recent times the spirituals and blues have been creeping more into focus. This is certainly a companion piece for her last album Blues and Lamentations. These are the hymns and faith declarations. She starts with the Woody Guthrie's "Jesus Christ" which kept Christ’s humanity and revolutionary spirit alive and well when the Church had lost something of his incarnation and near the end covers Kris Kristofferson’s "They Killed Him" to remind us about how we treated that incarnate baby eventually. From there, there are hymns like the eigth century Irish gem "Be Thou My Vision" and "God of Glory God of Grace," prayers like Thomas Merton’s "Prayer" set to music and her own songs of prophetic challenge to the American Church like "Would They Love Him Down in Shreveport" which asks what they would do with Jesus if he was a Jew and turned water into wine for their children and told them to give away their money!
Campbell has that voice that sits with Emmylou Harris and Patti Griffin, pure and powerful. The whole thing is dressed in very minimalist musical setting, mainly just Oldham’s tender piano and organ. This is a song for the pilgrimage; transcendent grace and heavenly love for flesh and blood situations. It is authentic, healing and challenging; a spiritual classic.
Steve Stockman
Steve Stockman is the Presbyterian
Chaplain at Queens University, Belfast, Ireland, where he lives in community
with 88 students. He has written two books Walk On; The Spiritual Journey
of U2 which he is currently updating and The Rock Cries Out; Discovering
Eternal Truth in Unlikely Music. He dabbles in poetry and songwriting and
he has a weekly radio show on BBC Radio Ulster (listen anytime of day or
night @ www.bbc.co.uk/ni/religion/rhythmandsoul). He has his own web page--Rhythms
of Redemption at http://stocki.ni.org . He also tries to spend some time
with his wife Janice and daughters Caitlin and Jasmine.